What can a summer visitor tell of Labrador, that great drear land
whose main feature is winter, the long severe winter which begins in
October and lasts until June? I have been sailing over summer seas,
where in winter no water is visible, but a wide waste of ice
stretching thirty, forty, fifty or more miles from the snowy shores.
In the same good ship "Harmony," I have been gliding between the
innumerable islands of the Labrador archipelago and up the fine fjords
stretching far inland among the mountains, but in winter those bays
and straits and winding passages are all white frozen plains, the
highways for the dog-sledge post from station to station. I have
visited each of our six mission-stations, dotted at intervals of from
forty to ninety miles along some 250 miles of the grand, rocky coast,
but I have seen them in their brightest and sunniest aspect, and can
only imagine how they look when stern winter has come to stay for
months, and the thermometer frequently descends to forty, fifty,
sixty, sometimes even seventy degrees below freezing point,
Fahrenheit. I have spent happy, busy days in those Christian villages,
nestling close by the shore under the shelter of one or another hill
that cuts off the icy northern blasts of winter. But I can fancy that
their ordinary aspect is very different to the bustle and interest of
the "shiptime." I have enjoyed the kindly hospitality of successive
mission-houses, one as neat and clean as the other. But I have seen
none of them half buried, as they often are, in snowdrifts of fifteen
or twenty feet deep. The summer sun sent down powerful rays into the
windows of the pleasant guest-chamber usually facing southward, but in
mid-winter the Okak mission-house lies in the shadow of a great hill
for weeks, and at other stations the sun describes a low curve over
the opposite mountains, and does little more than shed a feeble ray of
cheer upon the mid-day meal.
One unpleasant experience of the warmer season I have shared with our
missionaries, which they are spared in winter. That is the
inconvenience of the swarms of mosquitoes and sand flies, which make
them almost glad when the brief summer yields to a cooler autumn.
On the other hand many phases of Labrador life do not change with the
season of the year, least of all the spiritual verities which there,
as elsewhere, concern the welfare of the bodies and the souls of men,
and the eternal principles which should rule the life that now is, as
well as that which is to come. The Christian life of the dwellers in
those mission-houses, and, thank God, of the goodly congregations
gathered around them, has its source in a perennial fountain, flowing
summer and winter from the upper sanctuary. _This_ is the matter of
main interest to my readers, therefore I will transcribe, or rather
adapt, some diary pages, hoping they may convey correct impressions of
the daily surroundings and local conditions under which our dear,
self-denying missionaries are constantly toiling to win souls, and
build up truly Christian congregations.